Kaushal Timilsina

The business or shop that sells us things that we buy has the best link to a lot of manufacturers and distributors, and if we want something to back to the manufacturer, well the shopkeeper is perhaps the best place to return it to. And we can use it to support a circular economy. And the efforts can be even more manageable and make an impact if you subscribe to a product or a service.

Let's take an example: if I subscribe to a print newspaper, if I have not used today's newspaper irretrievably by tomorrow, I can leave it tonight by my mailbox, so that the person who delivers my newspaper tomorrow can take the old one back to the newspaper who can use it for new paper or sell it to a business that makes paper bags.

Another example: If I shop for a can drink at a supermarket, I can perhaps return it to the supermarket, who can return it to the distributor who comes to deliver new can drinks and who can then return it to the company, who can either use them for new cans or sell it to another business that could use it.

This might seem a little strange but it might be a good idea: If I buy vegetables or meat from a seller, it might be a good idea to return the vegetable and meat waste to the shopkeeper who could pass it to the distributor who then gives it back to the farmer that produced it, who can use that as compost.

The whole idea is that we do not have to go around to recycle waste, it might be much easier to go up the ladder. But there is a question: How can we encourage people to do it? Well, if I shop regularly at a shop, the shopkeeper could start giving me a digital receipt that would like any other receipt, show the things I bought at their place. And when I return it, I could get a refund on charges that go by "service charge", or perhaps Value Added Tax. It's like the shopkeeper tipping the buyer, but the shopkeeper is also tipped along the ladder and the manufacturer can recover the recyclables without collection trucks and strategies. (Perhaps Value Added Tax adding value to the transaction makes literary sense.)

As for the buyer, if I shop all my vegetables at a single shop, I could put up a bin at my home that goes by the name of that shop, or if I shop groceries at the same superstore every time, I could collect all the wrappers in the same bin. The feature here though will be that I could sort things that way, but it would be very difficult for shops and distributors to sort little chocalte wrappers and give it back to the manufacturers.

And so there comes the local authority like the metropolitan office. A wrapper manufacturer could recycle "perhaps" wrappers from products other than just its own. So, if we (the city policy ) can assign to each distributor a number of shops, and to each manufacturer a number of distributors - based on their production volume, their product etc. recycling just goes up. And a part of the waste management system now runs together with local businesses.

The main feature here is that the final customer can return waste if they are a regular at a shop.

I was watching a video about circular economy which was about Amsterdam, at PBS.org, and so had this idea: if we could keep track of the waste we wouldn't have to run around to figure out where it could have gone. Or we could do research on how much and what of the waste can we track? More importantly, we could prevent the waste from ending up somewhere out of the hands of a recycler. This way we could at least understand our waste.

Could this be done in Amsterdam? I was just trying to explore this approach and was really excited.

I asked my dad, “Do engineers in Nepal design farms?”

He said, “I haven't heard of anybody designing farms.”

But that isn't all true. Scientists at the MIT Media Lab- Caleb Harper's team has been making food computers and aim to create detailed opensource agriculture data that people around the world can access and apply to their farming and increase productivity.And it is amazing to note that the project does not use soil, recycles water and uses only selective artificial lighting. Vertical farms have been revolutionizing farming in the United States, Japan and many other countries; increasing productivity, preserving resources and minimizing greenhouse emissions. Biosphere 2 project in Arizona, United States is in a whole new level. The project is an self functioning ecosystem isolated from the outside world. Here studies and research is done on large scale ecosystems. Similar to the Biosphere 2, indoor ecosystems can be a great idea to design an artistic farmlands that can be able to accommodate plants that thrive across climates.

But why just stick to portable indoor farms?

Like buildings and bridges, farms are an important infrastructure. So, why do societies not actually build farms?- dig out the earth like buildings, make creative designs to enhance air, water and organic waste circulation, and adequate sun lighting.

In the two pictures above, I designed a small scale farm which can also be made mobile using wheels. In the parabolic farms crops grow on the slants which can be controlled using better designed geometry. Water can be distributed from the top which flow in through to the bottom where remaining water is collected. Atop cup-like structures where water flows through, skeletal frameworks can support rocks which support soil for the growth of the plants. The roots of the plants go beneath the rocks to reach for water and dissolved minerals; maintaining the concentrations and pH would be easier. The farm can be covered with plastics or glass structures to control temperature, humidity and other weather conditions. Solar panels can be used to produce energy required to operate the farms. Small scale farms can be made on wheels to make them mobile. And to accommodate cattle farming into the farms would be superb.

With ideas like engineering farms and engineering plants, let’s make agriculture and farming more cooler and exciting and interesting so that youngsters can get interested in farming, learn, develop and share amazing agriculture ideas and promote agriculture.

I watched BBC documentary “Extraordinary Homes” from Mountains, Coast and Forest. I also watched some videos of some awesome tiny homes.

I got inspired and designed a building which could be a home but also any other public or private building. One of the extraordinary homes, featured reusing a retired airplane. I loved the idea and that has been a major component in the design. Similar inspiration has been used to add reusing a retired ship into the design along with container from the famous container home designs. The two photographs above are the design for the building that uses recycled ship and airplane. The central hall is placed in the ship and the ship extends to the top for an extraordinary rooftop space. The airplane wings are used as roof to the ground floor and the body is redesigned as curved staircase or viewing area or performing area or anything cool. Container boxes can also be used for the halls to the sides of the ship. A lot of glass or just large windows without glass can be used for view purposes which is also accessible from the top. Solar can be placed on the roof. Perovskites are super awesome solar technology under development with so many awesome properties: they can be of any color, be printed on any surface and are flexible. Using wheels the building can be mobile but also using float-able materials below the large halls on either side, people can suit the building to cruise experience. Triangles are stiff, triangles are like the mountain, hexagons are superawesome, windows are supercool, designing with consideration to wind, temperature, pressure, sunlight, and blending with the landscape instead of disturbing it are some awesome ideas I learnt from the BBC Extraordinary Homes.

There are a lot of refugees, people affected by disasters and poor people around the world. We can promote manufacture and distribution of tiny homes which would be cheaper. More people can buy their own homes and social organizations can provide better shelter to more people at lower costs. People can also change the location of their home without selling it. More ideas of urban plannings and infrastructure planning can be discussed starting with such ideas. Mobile homes on wheels would be easier to transport and can also serve better as temporary homes. We can also promote solar usage by promoting such homes. However, managing waste and sanitation will be a bigger responsibility.

It would also be an amazing idea to build many small homes together. With some framework on the roof of the houses kept together, there can be community market, play fields, restaurants or just anything cool on the large rooftop field without using extra land. People can also use rooftops as cattle sheds or put mobile farms on the tops. That would be so cool. People can also rent the space to one another or use the whole as community spaces. That would just be a great idea for sub-urban planning.

Designing and producing small homes and farms can promote access to shelter and food to more people. In harsh weathers and disaster affected areas, farms and homes can be transported and millions of people can be helped. A well managed project could be a global phenomenon.

An excerpt from some ideas that I was sharing with my recommenders to write me a reference, follow after the next paragraph. This is about how we could smoothen the flow of Traffic in Kathmandu, Nepal. The central idea to this is

"To not let the vehicles that are not coming from or going to, the same road; pass by, by promoting closed polygonal-circular, squared, triangular and other polygons at junctions"
And a week ago I watched this very interesting video from the channel Vox: Superblocks: How Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZORzsubQA_M"
The video explores how Barcelona is promoting social life and connecting people by reducing cars reducing traffic in the heart of communities. The closed polygon idea together with the Superblock idea with wise choice of one way usage and smart programming of traffic lights can be useful in designing a smoother traffic way in Amsterdam.

"2. Smoother Traffic, Healthier Roads
One fine sunny day; a cool one too, as I was walking past the Tinkune Park; near the Tribhhuvan International Airport, I had a clever idea based on my observation. The park is triangular in shape with a road along each side and a junction at each of the corners, which almost everyone passing by notices.

What I noticed was that on one side- the Baneshwor-Koteshwor road, the traffic is very heavy. The other two roads are free and the traffic is smooth. However, if the park was not there and all the roads were to meet at the same junction, the heavy traffic on the Baneshwor-Koteshwor road would trouble the vehicles on the other two roads.

Thinking it the other way; making a park at junctions with heavy traffic could cause fewer disturbances on at least one of the roads and probably all of the roads at the junction. The key to that; two vehicles not going the same way are not allowed to meet. For example, a bus at Koteshwor corner of the park travelling towards Airport and a car at the Airport corner of the park travelling towards Baneshwor would never meet; if they started out at the same time from the corners. This definitely decreases the mess in the roads whilst creating a free space and some healthy grass amid the crowd.

For those junctions with four roads; such as that in Maharajganj, I would think of four quarter-circle shaped park each between two roads. This would facilitate vehicles travelling straight on preexistent paths and those travelling to adjacent roads would go along the arc of the parks. The vehicles travelling towards Chabahil from Basundhara and those travelling from Basundhara to Chabahil would continue on straight while those travelling from Basbari to Baluwatar and those travelling from Baluwatar to Basbari would stop. And on the go of the traffic, the latter would go straight and the former would stop. Those vehicles travelling from Basbari to Chabahil would go along the arc of the park between these two roads and those travelling from Basbari to Basundhara would go along the arc of the park between those roads. But of course, with all the houses, parks would not be applicable in Maharajganj. But somewhere else this could be a pretty neat idea.

For places like maharajganj, I had another idea and that was on some other extremely sunny mornings. I would ride my cousin’s motorbike to Baneshwor and it all comes back to Tinkune.
Just till the bridge in Tinkune- which is narrower than the roads, the traffic is stuck it takes more than five minutes to get across that little section of the road. And once you cross the bridge, it’s absolutely free and spacious. And this dramatic experience happens at around 10 in the morning when hurrying vehicles go left and right causing their own mess.

And in heavily crowded junctions; where making parks is not possible, this could be it. If a small section of the road prior to the junction is narrowed down a bit making footpaths or planting trees, a lot of traffic would get stuck prior to the junction creating lesser mess at the junction. Footpaths and trees would be the perfect way to create free, natural space in the crowded streets of Kathmandu.

And for the best, widening roads would be a great thing to do, and better to do faster and made stronger to avoid a lot of dust. "

Thank you very much!